Burning in Water
by zachem
Summary: Ville Valo is thirty-five and has just lost his girlfriend. In need of a break, he sets off for the rural town of Saarijärvi and the calm of a lakeside cabin. But through an incident with a puncture he meets engimatic local boy Eino, and sparks will fly..
1. Chapter one: Beginning

His heart had not beaten for a week. After she died, he had gone fifty endless hours without sleep, and had rocked himself in his tears to their music, their song, choking desperate words down the phone to his mother and his friends. Monotony. Without her, normality had ceased and it its place was disorder and confusion. Around their apartment were her things, his things, laying beside each other like they were meant to be or had been; at first he'd touched them just because he knew she had touched them too. And her smell. On his pillow was the floral tones of her hair, so he couldn't even sleep without jerking awake sobbing because she had been in his dream again.

He'd thought he was going mad, but then his friends had been there around him, had helped him out. He'd heard on blogs all across the Internet fans were offering unending prayers and thoughts, and that lifted him, but only a little, because she was gone. She had been taken from him. And yet somewhere in those first few black nights he came to terms with her absence, somewhere between the crying and the frustration and the hatred, and he reached a state of neutrality, a kind of emotional no-man's land where he was neither impassioned or nonchalant. He cared and yet he did not care; he could cry and he could not cry. He taught himself to control the outbursts and trained himself not to look at her things. He moved out of his apartment, stayed with Mikko for a while, adopted [i]his[/i] routine so he didn't fall into his own miserable one.

But he couldn't avoid it for long, and push came to shove, and he was forced into staring into an eternity that stretched on without her, ever. It was unbearable and he had to escape it. When he returned to their apartment after a while it seemed like nothing had changed, and he kidded himself that they'd been on holiday somewhere bright and happy like the Bahamas and she was just late home from work. But no kidding himself could return her to him, but neither would his drifting around in perpetual apathy. Somehow, he was going to have to wish himself into a state whereby he returned in some way to normality. He didn't feel normal inside, but gazing out of his apartment across the city he knew that it was stifling him. A sense of claustrophobia like he'd never known engulfed him. He ached quite suddenly for somewhere else, for the open glassy lakes, solace, peace, a place where he could reconcile himself. It seemed like a good idea, and everyone agreed it was. He might stay out there a week or two; it might be a month or more. The thought of a cabin and the outdoors and himself and an acoustic seemed the only tenable solution. Music in the night, keeping to himself, crying if he wanted to, screaming if he needed it. Solitude. And even if he got worse, the interminable black depths of the lakes would offer to keep him safe forever beside her.

so i'm not even a HIM fan myself, really, but recently i've happened to have seen a lot of pictures of ville's face, and i've been wanting to write something into a similar setting for a while. i don't know why, he seemed to fit as a character. and...yep. this might be a little dark, but hopefully more uplifting eventually, because i've been through two deaths myself recently, one of a boyfriend, and so i think i should be able to deal with it in a sensetive way, and of course ville's beautiful face will give me inspiration either way ;)


	2. Chapter two: Ride

It was Mikko who helped him organise things. Because Ville struggled on some days to complete a task without becoming exhausted or distracted or both he got things together. Without him hardly realising, a spacious cabin was arranged for him; a flight up to Jyväskylä Airport and a car to take him to the local town. It seemed perfect, a fool-proof arrangement for everyone but Ville who, days before his scheduled leaving, doubted whether getting away so completely was going to suit him. Would the solitude have an adverse effect? Did he need to be surrounded by people to amuse him, distract him from those thoughts that threatened to overwhelm him.

Mikko said no. Several times. He was the most insistent that, looking at Ville's character and how people had behaved with this kind of thing in the past, it was better for him to be alone, if that was what he wanted. But if it wasn't- it was, Mikko had assured him. It was. And besides, he'd added, the place was three-bedroom, spacious, modern; there was television and even an Internet connection sometimes if he wanted. Ville felt like he wouldn't use any of that, though; all of that provided a connection with real life, difficult life, the life that went on. In going away he wished to escape the truth that his fate lay in life without her any more. Perhaps if he got far enough away from the city he would believe that it had never happened, and when he eventually remembered that it had he would be okay about it, reconciled, maybe little indifferent. Wasn't freedom what everyone so desperately reached for, ached for, even? And here he was, having it offered to him, having his worried label representatives telling him he needed to chill out before he broke down. He should take the opportunity, take it and be happy for it, he knew.

They were all mind-games. Ways of making it better, playing with himself, check-mating his mind into a place where he believed everything would be okay. But it wasn't. No matter how much he thought and thrashed it about in his mind, his reality would get him every time, it would throw him down on the floor and hold him mercilessly by his throat. And those were the moments where he'd weaken, where he'd break down in sobs, become half the man he was supposed to be; and those were the times, just like the morning he left to go to the airport that he needed Mikko there, beside him.

There goodbyes were fond but brief. Ville felt that if he sentimentalized it too much that it would feel like something big had changed- which it had- and that it would bring it all back. And he didn't want that. He just wanted to feel like he was holing himself up there to record, perhaps, his own personal album of his experienced, a short break from the band. Yes. That was how he had to think of it, definitely. That was what he would tell people, too, if they asked, just so he didn't have to speak its horrid truth out loud: he'd tell anyone that asked that he had retreated to write some music, give time to himself. It seemed like a hippy-ish, rock-and-roll thing to do, going clean, being with nature.

And so boarding the plane was not to difficult, because if he put a positive spin on it like he was doing now it seemed to be all better. And despite the few people with cameras waving books at him to sign, he felt lifted, lifted and alone but hopeful; hopeful for the first time in perhaps two weeks since she had been, so cruelly, taken from him.

so, this is the first chapter! hope you like this. i have a plan, and that it's no part will take more than twenty-five minutes to write not only because that's the only time i can find but because i think it's easier sometimes to read something in itty-bitty bitesize chunks than in one big go. yes? comments are absolutely wonderful, and i promise it'll get more interesting in the next chapter or so!


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